Royal library

Four major digitization projects will allow the Royal Library first to preserve some degrading documents, second to make them widely accessible from anywhere.

These projects will include newspapers (1831-1950), 19th century printed works, manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and reference books.

For the first two – the newspapers and 19th century printed works, the degradation is mainly due to the poor paper quality. This quality went down in the second half of the 19th century, which explains why many older books are in much better condition!

About 3 millions newspapers pages have already been digitized, but this task is far from over as the press was very prolific in our country. There was a time when in each city or town, no matter its size, one could find a socialist paper, a liberal paper, a catholic paper, etc.

The digitization of the manuscripts is part of a European project, whose purpose is to digitize all manuscripts in very high quality. This superior quality is important as researchers, historians and others who need to refer to these unique artifacts require an extremely precise view, to the smallest detail.

Finally, this digitization will allow us to virtually recreate prestigious family collections, which today are scattered around the world. The books of library of the Dukes of Bourgogne, originally from Brussels, which are now also in Paris and Madrid are a good example: only 235 books out of 900 are still in Brussels.

Other categories of documents or objects in the care of the Royal Library have already been digitized or will be in the relatively short term: currencies and medals, prints and maps, to name a few.

[Interview with one of the managers of the digital department]

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